Security cameras capture the moment that a man saved his neighbor’s dog. The dog’s leash got caught in the doors of an elevator.

27-year-old Johnny Mathis was returning from work in Houston, Texas. He parked his car in the underground garage at the apartment complex and started to work his way to his home. He lives on the ground floor so he took the elevator up to his apartment. When he got off, a woman was getting on the elevator with her dog.

“When she got on, I was looking at the dog, because it was a cute dog,” Mathis told CNN. “I noticed the leash was kinda long but I didn’t think it wasn’t going to make it on the elevator or anything.”

Mathis posted the 39-second clip on Twitter. He leaves the elevator but quickly turns around and comes back to pick up the Pomeranian once he saw what was happening.

When he saw the Pomeranian had not gone on to the elevator with the woman, he yelled to her, “hey your dog!”

“Instinct just kicked in, I just grabbed that leash,” he said. “There was so much fur, that’s why it took me a bit to get that lever off of the collar and when I did, I let go, you could see that leash just shoot off to the top of the elevator.”

The elevator doors had shut and Mathis could hear the dog’s owner crying inside.

When he got the Pomeranian free from the leash, he kept banging on the elevator to let her know that the dog was safe. Mathis doesn’t think she heard him.

“She thought the worse, that the dog had died,” he said.

When she came back to the ground floor, she was thankful but understandably upset and couldn’t stop crying.

“I think she just said ‘thank you’ and we hugged but she was just so overcome with emotion,” he said.

Mathis thinks that she had just moved into the apartment complex so she may not be aware of how the elevators worked. He hasn’t seen her since the incident.

The next day, Mathis went to the leasing office at the apartment to tell them what had taken place. They took a look at the security video and saw it happening. The leasing agents were surprised that the dog was still safe.

In the end, Mathis is happy that he was there to help and feels that it was just a simple accident. He is thankful that he was in the right place at the right time.

Y’all I’m shaking!!! I just saved a dog on a leash that didn’t make it onto the elevator with the owner before the door closed! I just happened to turn around as the door closed and it started to lift off the ground I got the leash off in time😭😭

— Johnny Mathis (@Johnnayyeee) December 10, 2019